They didn’t switch any life vests. According to the stories there wouldn’t even have been a chance for anybody to switch life vests. They had a mannequin in a partially-inflated infant life jacket that was retrieved by the USCG as if it was Fuddy.
That mannequin is filmed in the cabin in the same seat with Jake and had a blue cap like his, except that it was the wrong shape and there wasn’t Jake’s hair (including ponytail) sticking out of the bottom of the mannequin’s hat - but was reddish hair held inside the hat (red hair that later shows up right next to Jake as he first got into the water). That mannequin was sitting straight-up on the outside-most side of the seat while Jake sat straight up on the interior-most side of the seat. That mannequin’s lifelike pudgy hand is seen in the cabin footage dangling down from a high position at an angle where it could not have belonged to any of the 3 people within that tiny space (Jake, Rosa, and Puentes). At that point Jake is making a beeline for the exit, apparently carrying the mannequin (with dangling hand) over the top of Puentes’ camera which at that point was studiously recording everybody’s feet.
What happened to the real Fuddy, in the fully-inflated adult life jacket she was recorded wearing next to Yamamoto? She obviously wasn’t retrieved by the USCG and thus examined by coroner Lindsey Harle. Where did she go? I have some suspicions, but it seems like the NTSB or FBI should be answering that question, no? The NTSB had the video; they saw that Fuddy’s jacket was fully inflated so had to have 2 punctured CO2 cartridges. They saw that what was retrieved from the ocean (claimed as being Fuddy) still had a CO2 cartridge intact. They therefore knew that what was retrieved was not Fuddy. Why did they fail to find out what really happened? Why did they go along with the big lie?
That’s the back of Jake Key’s head. The bright sunlight changes the color to look reddish to the camera. Watch the video just before the left to right shift by Puente. You can see the sunlight move up the cabin washing out the colors.
Not a mannequin.